"Why, Nan Graham, what do you mean by coming out here so late?" Polly demanded. "When I told you that you might look on at our Council Fire to-night I thought of course that you would come to camp before dark so that I could ask permission and explain."
Half leading, half pulling the newcomer, who after all was only another young girl, Polly drew her closer to the circle of their slowly dying fire. First she looked appealingly at their guardian, who had walked forward with them, and then from one of her friends' faces to the other until she found Betty's. There were no returning glances of sympathy from a single one of the Camp Fire girls.
Unfortunately, Nan Graham was not a stranger to any member of the Sunrise Hill club except to Juliet and Beatrice Field, who were themselves strangers in Woodford. Had Nan been, her reception would have been more cordial, even though appearing at night in so unconventional a fashion. But the newcomer had been a student with most of the girls at the high school the winter before and had been expelled for supposed dishonesty. Her family was impossible, the father, a man of good birth fallen so low that his own people would have nothing to do with him, had married an emigrant woman and Nan was one of many children. The girl had tried working in the village, but no one cared to trouble with her long. And yet she was just a little more than fifteen years old and not an unattractive looking girl, although her face was curiously older than any other girl's in the group about her. To-night she was wearing a shabby black frock, torn and dusty, and her coarse short black hair was unpleasantly disheveled.
"I couldn't leave home until late and then I lost my way," she replied finally, answering Polly's question in a sullen fashion because of the weight of disapproval.
"What right had you to say she could come, Polly O'Neill, when you understand that we like to keep our Council Fires to ourselves?" flashed Betty, and then stopped, knowing that it was plainly not her place to speak first.
"You should have returned home when you found you had mistaken the way," Miss McMurtry frowned. "You ought not to have come through the woods alone at this hour of the night, Nan, as you know perfectly well. But there is no way now for me to send you back to-night, though I am sure I don't know what to do with you. Polly, I think you owe it to us to explain why you invited a guest to camp and then gave us no warning so that we might have been prepared."
Under the influence of the meeting of the Council Fire and perhaps more under the spell of Polly's magnetism than she realized, Miss McMurtry, although it was plain that she was a good deal vexed, did not put her question severely.
So it was naturally irritating, not only to her but to a number of the girls as well, to have Polly, in the midst of the general disapproval, suddenly shrug her shoulders and give a characteristic laugh. "Oh, for goodness' sake, don't let us make a mountain out of a molehill!" she begged. "I was coming back to camp this afternoon and happening to pass Nan's home, she told me something that I thought it great fun for us to know. Some of our boy friends are coming out to camp to-morrow disguised as Indians and mean to take us by surprise. We can be prepared for them and so turn the joke around the other way. Well, after Nan told me this we talked for a little while, while Mollie and Bee and Sylvia walked on ahead. She seemed desperately anxious to hear about our camp and how we were living and what we were doing, so I told her to come along and see us. I really don't see that she can do us any harm. As far as to-night is concerned, why I will make up beds for us just outside our tent, for I have been wishing to sleep outdoors ever since we came into camp."
"And then I can go back home again in the morning," the newcomer said with a scowl. "I wasn't meaning to do any harm just by looking on."
Polly would have liked to have embraced Margaret Everett on the spot, for now separating herself from her friends she came shyly forward taking the strange girl's hand. "I am sorry you have had such a tiresome walk," she said kindly; "come let us all get ready for bed."